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The town of Amara West

Amara West is a town of modest size compared to
the royal residence towns of Tell el-Amarna or Qantir in Egypt
proper, and once stood on an island in the Nile as it flows
eastwards.

A mudbrick town wall was built in the reign of Seti I, as shown
by bricks bearing his stamped cartouche, measuring around 100m on
each side. Three gates provided entrance to the town, the
northeastern one leading into the stone cult temple. Perhaps
commenced under Seti I, the decoration was undertaken under later
kings, most notably Ramses II, Merenptah and near the end of
Egyptian control of the area, Ramses IX.

The temple, built from poor quality local sandstone is of
typical plan for this era, with three cult chapels at the rear. It
remains preserved, buried underneath spoil from the excavations of
the 1940s, and at some point will require new epigraphic
recording.

The remainder of the walled town comprised densely packed
mudbrick buildings, including large-scale storage, housing of
varying grandeur (from 50 to 500m²) and structures of unclear
function.

The Egypt Exploration Society excavators identified four phases
of architecture, thought to span the 19th and 20th dynasties.

The magnetometry survey of 2008 revealed the hitherto unknown
western suburb, with a series of large villas. One of these was
excavated in 2009, and featured rooms for large-scale
grain-processing and bread cooking, as well as private areas with
brick-paved floors and whitewashed walls. Near the southeastern
corner of this building, we uncovered the remains of a circular
building of unclear purpose, whose architecture clearly falls
within a Nubian, not pharaonic, tradition, and thus might reflect
the ethnic diversity of the population at Amara West. Further
excavation in the western suburb in 2013 and 2014 has revealed
additional villas and mid-sized houses, built over extensive
rubbish deposits and probable garden plots.

There are few signs of Ramesside period buildings elsewhere on
the island, although a group of small chapels and other buildings
excavated by the EES outside the east wall of the town may hint at
further suburb buried beneath the sand. Otherwise, much of the land
was probably perfect for small-scale agricultural use, given the
rich alluvial deposits left on its banks by the Nile channel each
year.